Advance Reader Review
A piercing exploration of grief and transformation in the Sedona desert
In this affecting 7,080-word novelette, the author crafts a resonant story of thirteen-year-old Emma’s journey through grief in the mystical landscape of Sedona, Arizona. When her Welsh Terrier disappears into the desert, Emma’s search becomes an unexpected path toward confronting deeper losses.
The story’s power lies in its emotional authenticity. Emma’s raw moments of vulnerability and her father’s hidden struggles avoid sentimentality while delivering genuine pathos. The Sedona setting functions not merely as a backdrop but as a character itself—ancient, knowing, and transformative.
Secondary characters transcend expected tropes, particularly a shop owner who offers wisdom born from lived experience rather than mysticism. The narrative weaves coincidences that hover beautifully between the explicable and mysterious, trusting readers to find their own meaning in these connections.
What Returns With The Moon reminds us that transformation happens in the spaces between letting go and holding on, between what the desert takes and what it unexpectedly returns. This brief but potent work lingers long after reading, like desert heat that remains in stone after sunset.
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Not all who wander are lost.
Not all who return are the same.
Not all who change are gone.
When thirteen-year-old Emma’s dog vanishes into Sedona’s red rocks, her search reveals mysterious artifacts and a talisman connecting past and present, teaching her that grief doesn’t just diminish us… but transforms who she becomes in the wake of her mother’s death.
THIS STORY IS IN FINAL EDITING… MORE TO COME.
